


Cicatrice, Or: The Ornaments of Forgetting

by hitlikehammers



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Deleted Memories, Emotionally Repressed, First Time, Following Breadcrumbs, Happy Ending, Hard Drive, M/M, Mind Palace, Mnemonic Devices, Reacquaintance, Reunion, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 09:18:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In order to survive, to <i>protect</i>; to save his mind from the distraction, to spare his heart the ache, Sherlock deletes John Watson. </p><p>Sherlock <i>deletes</i> <s>John Watson.</s> </p><p>And then he comes back home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cicatrice, Or: The Ornaments of Forgetting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [speakmefair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/gifts).



> For my dear [speakmefair](): a thank you of proportions I can't properly express, a gift long-belated, and all my undumb letters (amid plenty of dumb ones, too) <3 
> 
> Story title credit to Walter Benjamin and Graham Greene. 
> 
> This story is a) very unbetaed (and as-yet unedited for typos and the like, but late present was late and I don't want to make it later, so, you know: in due course), b) very un-Britpicked, and c) generally requires some significant suspensions of disbelief. Fair warning.

The sounds, really, are all he can still recall of that day, of that one day where everything changed and the permanent, trembling fault line in the foundation of his life, his composure, his goddamned sanity finally decided to give way not in parts, not in halves but in whole, once and for all where he thought there couldn’t be any more falling.

He recalls the ringing, the standardised ringtone of his mobile resonating wall to wall and John remembers the way he’d flinched against the tinny notes, harsh against the already searing pain behind his eyelids, no, sod it, his eye _balls_ , pounding and piercing and driving his stomach into seizing fits of nausea because no one called him, no one worth noting, at least, because he saw Greg, it was scheduled, it had been scheduled since after those first few months, those first horrible months where there was nothing but echoes and hollows and the temptation of falling like morphine and cyanide and the blessing of some sordid god. No one called, because he made it painstakingly fucking _clear_ that he was not to be called in until midweek at earliest because he'd just worked a double with no goddamned complaints, and Mrs. Hudson was downstairs baking, he could smell the cakes warming, and Harry, well, she was only allowed one call a week from rehab, and he suspected it'd be Clara again, come Thursday.

John remembered then, as he remembers now, that nothing good ever came from a phone call. John remembers texts were always better.

He recalls the drumbeat, the resounding echo of his pulse through the whole of his body, shaking him with the force of thunderclaps and avalanches just as they’re starting to roll—not speeding so much as pounding, all depth and force and shuddering and the bass of it distracted John from processing what came after the first words, the words that were simple and clear across the line and yet impossible, the words that were lies and maybe that’s why they cut through his chest and made his breath hurt in the coming. Maybe. 

He recalls the shattering of his mug as it slid from his fingers, but more than the shattering he remembers the pop of his knuckles as he grasped for it long seconds after it’d already fallen, already reached the floor and splattered hard upon impact, messy, but John’s reaction time was shot to hell, and he’d tried to catch the inevitable, tried to stop the unchangeable, and it was _lies lies lies_ , and if his heart continued rattling his bones as it was, it might have just burst forth and fallen to the floor too, and all John could see when he clamped his eyes shut was red, all red, too red.

Red, gone, dead, lost: those were truths. Those were truths, he knew, because lies hurt differently. Lies didn’t stun before they broke, they simply burned.

Those were _truths_ , and whatever came after them contradicted the sight and the sound and the feeling, whatever came after was nothing but lies, and John remembers the murmurs in his head reminding him of that fact, reminding him of what it felt to be there, to know it and to touch it and to grieve, to never stop _grieving_ , dear god, not once.

He recalls the sound of the words that followed in that voice, that voice—the voice responsible for the truths that made a lie and tore John’s universe apart at the seams; the voice responsible for the lies that were threatening to cave the remains and bury John entirely, and John remembers not knowing whether to rail against the indignity, the disrespect to a memory that could never amount to the man, or to laugh, bitter, and thank the fucker for his twisted sense of humour because if it could be done, John could stop trying so hard, John could dispense with the boredom of everyday life and the act of portraying it as anything like _enough_ —the effort of tolerating monotony after starlight—he could give in and fall into the fallacy of it, the fantasy; John could pretend, maybe, for a time, and it would act as a balm, a salve, an analgesic that could never touch the ache of a missing limb, but might distract him, might let him breathe easier for a moment. Two if he was lucky.

He recalls a sound it took him ages to identify—remembers what it sounded like to his ringing ears before he’d realised its source: glass cracking but refusing to do the courtesy of coming undone; the explosion of a bomb close enough to feel the vibrations in the ground, but too far to have a chance in hell at helping, at saving; the howls, that followed—the dying gasps when they were dirty, when they were wrenching and God came too late.

John recalls the sound, the sound he made, when the words were spoken, before they sank in, and after; oh _after_.

 _He’s alive_.

John doesn’t recall the sound of those words, really.

The sound of his pulse, though, after they come? That sounds, he absolutely remembers.

That sound hasn’t really stopped.

_____________________________________

“He deleted me.”

Mycroft’s home, John notes, is much like the man himself: far too buttoned-up to be comfortable.

“It appears that way, yes.”

Mycroft’s terrace, John notes, is also reminiscent of its owner: falsely pleasant, and—with its unfurled awning in the full swell of sun—overly-concerned with the possibility of rain.

“But he’s alive.”

John’s fingertips slip against the arms of his chair as he drums them, idly; his nails might leave dents in the varnish, if he’s lucky.

If he cares.

“He is.” 

Mycroft’s tight nod is an art form, John realises. He wishes he’d seen it sooner, perhaps asked for tips.

John finds himself wishing much harder for something stronger than the tea in his hand.

“Did you know?”

“I didn’t.” Pity. John really would have loved a reason to throw a right hook at the sod. He’s certain it would make him feel better.

And really: maybe he doesn’t need a reason. 

“I can’t even say that I suspected, but I,” Mycroft stumbles, and fuck, fuck all: it shivers the resolve that John had been holding to so tightly, it sparks the bitter agony in his chest and makes it vibrate, makes it echo in the hollow cavern of his ribs, dancing around his weary heart—whistling through the tatters that are left of the soul he’d had, the soul he’d thought he’d lost and it was better that way, maybe, probably, because its absence is better than its blood, isn’t it? 

Being empty is better than forever bleeding out.

“I’d hoped,” Mycroft says, and the words are soft. So soft.

John sips his tea and looks away, drinks to the dregs because he can lie to the world all he wants; he’ll never convince his own self: empty isn’t better.

Fuck _all_.

_____________________________________

In truth, he is not—upon returning—so far gone as to fail in realising that there are gaps, that holes exist and allow contaminants, permit moisture to seep and compromise the system.

The fact remains that deletion—true deletion—is not for the faint of heart. To eradicate a single thought is simple enough, or even to banish a collection of concepts that create a whole, that comprise an entity at surface level: elementary.

And yet, echoes persist. 

Echoes _always_ persist, because an idea does not exist in isolation. A concept is not without correlates. A thing that is known is not known outside of relation.

Unfortunate though that may be.

And for a network that depends upon connection, a lattice of direct and indirect interplay, the unraveling of which is a task of decades at least: for a mind that exists to reference and cross-reference every hypothesis presented, the idea of deleting anything as a whole, in its entirety, is not to be considered lightly.

The actual undertaking itself is perhaps the most laborious thing he’s ever known.

That said: deletion is not unknown to him. Small things are easier, less time-consuming, obviously. Larger items precede those rare occasions of sleep, less an indulgence and more a penance, his mind exacting payment for the strain. 

He thinks on it now, the phantom pressure of the task heavy in his bones as he breathes in deep, grasps the arms of the chair he sits in, and the hollow timbre of his pulse is resonant in each of his fingertips. It’s taxing, deleting anything at all, really, let alone a thing of consequence.

And he remembers, recalls: he’d been compromised.

He’d been compromised, though he does not remember why.

So if Sherlock Holmes waits in his brother’s sitting room, mouth dry, alone in the lowlight of overcast mid-afternoon, it’s for a sign, perhaps. He waits for something to emerge to fill the empty spots he can sense, can pinpoint when he enters his Mind Palace, when he retreats and delves deep into the Control Room, where the Hard Drive stretches far along walls, glimmering and flashing and whirring at inhuman speeds, because while nothing is malfunctioning, exactly, there are so many files, so many folders with broken paths, corrupted shortcuts, the way blocked or locked or forgotten.

Hidden. Misplaced.

Which is how Sherlock knows that whatever he is missing, it was too big, too important, to have been uprooted without more effort than he’d possessed. 

Breadcrumbs, he thinks. Little clues.

Despite everything, if nothing else: he is still a detective.

He merely requires sufficient data to deduce.

_____________________________________

“I’m sorry."

The bottom of John's stomach falls swift, floats near bottom and leaves him reeling, yearning, half-sick because the man before him, the man looks like Sherlock, sounds like Sherlock, save that Sherlock would never say that.

Sorry.

“You’re in mourning," Sherlock continues, his tone objective, thought loitering toward curious. "Isn’t that the appropriate thing to say to someone in mourning?”

John has to fight to keep his jaw from dropping, to keep his heart from leaping traitorous out his gaping mouth. There's no sense in attempting speech.

Sherlock frowns, blinks, stares.

“Not good?”

Jesus _Christ_.

John clears his throat, tilts his head; opens his mouth to speak and there’s a sound that comes out, half a hum, half a whine. He shakes his head, presses his lips together, and wishes that could be enough to stop the cracking at all ends, on all sides: the tumult that's wracking his body from the inside at the sight of this, the reality in front of him.

“Suicide or murder?”

John doesn’t have the cognitive resources to have really thought out what Sherlock might say next, but of all the possibilities, that hadn’t been what he was betting on.

“Excuse me?” John manages to ask, only an octave above his range. Good. That’s good.

“Hmm,” Sherlock’s eyes narrow as they take him in, rake over him deliberately, but so fucking fast. John knows he’s being dissected, being observed, and he hadn’t realised how different it had always been, before. Sherlock had always watched him, had always studied his actions and his movements and predicted his responses, but John hadn’t been paying enough attention that first time, in the lab.

He’d never realised that when Sherlock looked at _him_ , it had always been different from the way he’d look at everyone else.

He understands, now, how the other half feels, the discrepancy gnawing anxious at his ribs. 

He doesn’t much care for it.

“Both, perhaps,” Sherlock intrudes on John’s musings; possibly for the best, and yet. “Interesting.”

John’s throat, he finds, is suddenly very tight.

“What are you—”

“You lost,” Sherlock’s eyes dart waspishly. “Not family, you can’t stand what few surviving relatives you have, particularly not your sister, who’s back to the bottle yet again. Not your fault, you know. Her ex-wife?” Sherlock pauses, gleans confirmation from John’s wrist, or maybe from his shoelaces. “Mmm, yes, ex-wife, she remarried. Trigger event. Spurs relapses.” he adds, and that’s strange, that’s not like Sherlock—or else, not like Sherlock would treat a stranger, would treat a person who wasn’t a friend.

“It was someone close to you,” Sherlock observes. “Not in the conventional sense that results in the ritual of mourning among the general populace. Closer than that. A fixture of daily life. Partner? No, not just a colleague in the colloquial application...”

John swallows; mouth’s dry, too. 

“You lived together. Friend, no,” Sherlock’s head tilts, and a shiver shoots down John’s spine as Sherlock’s eyes widen, sharpen, narrow, soften. “No, lover. Lover? Hmm...” John swallows the cough, the choke that follows those words, that word, because John knows who he lost, John knows who he mourns, or was mourning, maybe still needs to mourn. 

Paradox. Always a fucking paradox.

“You’d known her for some time before her death, felt incredibly close to her, though you’re unsure if she felt similarly. Probably not, I must inform you, discrepancies in affections between partners are a near guarantee,” and John wants to laugh, wants desperately to laugh because yes, yes, that, because Sherlock had died, Sherlock had thrown himself off a goddamned building and left John with a pulseless wrist and dead eyes and all that fucking blood as it leaked, as it spread: Sherlock left John with the intricate lacing of red on grey behind his eyes like the racing of the blood in his veins and the wrenching of the screams from his throat in the middle of the night and he’d never thought twice, apparently.

Hell, the bastard _deleted_ him. Wilfully removed him from his thoughts, his memories, his annoyances, his judgements, his eschewance-of-sentiment, lanced straight out of a mind that John thought he held a steadier place inside, burned from a heart that John had only realised he wanted a stronghold in when it was too late.

Discrepancies. Right.

What John swallows hard around, in the end: it isn’t laughter. 

“You were strangers before you moved in,” Sherlock picks up again, though John hears it all through a buzzing, a haze. “Flatshare, then, following your return from active duty. She offered you a rate you could afford in the city you loved, I can’t say I blame you for that, London’s worth greater sins.”

John wants to vomit, just a little, at the way his stomach, the way his chest clenches tight when Sherlock shoots him a quick grin—commiserating, half-sham, half-something more, and John can’t make heads of it from tails; John doesn’t think he deserves this, not really.

“Did you fall for her, or did she seduce you?”

And there it is. There’s the thing that John had been skimming off the surface of his world without realising it from months before Bart’s, before the end; there’s the thing that his therapist had been trying to ease from him, trying to draw like poison from a mortal wound and he’d fought because what was the fucking point.

There it is.

“Was it simply physical or did you fall in love with her?”

This time, John doesn’t fight the reaction: he gapes, rather like a fish, he suspects, and if it hadn’t been for the high-pitched buzzing drowning out all higher cognition, he thinks he might have bothered being a bit embarrassed for the way his jaw hangs low.

If it hadn’t been for the way his heart’s racing with a force that spells disaster, bruising wild in his chest, well, he’s not sure what he might have done.

So it’s a good thing, mostly—the buzzing and the pounding and the hurt—because what he does, in the end, is turn on his heel and all but run from the presence of this one man, this one body to which John orientates, around which John was always going to orbit and he’d been a right fool to think that would fade, to think that gravity would be anything but Sherlock fucking Holmes, that it would change for something so trivial as time, or space, or life and death.

John’s not sure he breathes until he’s safely in the car on his way back to Baker Street, and somehow, when his lungs do fill, it feels too heavy, sits all wrong.

John’s not sure what to make of it.

_____________________________________

His brother calls it “The Fall.” 

Ridiculous sentiment, of course, but it does spark recollections: facts not deleted, simply reassigned, buried beneath misleading labels in all the wrong places, but easily reclaimed upon prompting, once he knows the right keywords, once he recalls which searches to run. And those searches, they yield results, results that make sense, that infuse a gruelling manhunt with newfound reason, with _meaning_ , and Sherlock dissects those results and runs the pursuant queries, delves deeper, begins to shape a foundation. Sherlock begins to form something sustainable, something solid upon which to build, and that makes all the locked doors, the protected files: it renders all of the boundaries tolerable, in the short-term, in the interim.

Before he can stop himself, he looks for ‘John Watson’ in the infinite corridors, the blocks upon blocks of data storage, terabyte after terabyte rushing past his consciousness and yet, nothing. He reaches past the surface, digs in and latches to the terror and the dark that lies beneath, tries to parse without the light—he knows, he _knows_ there used to be light; and yet, he’s left bereft of anything meaningful. 

Mycroft had called the man a flatmate. Not unusual that a flatmate would be deleted entirely for the simple want of space, and quickly done.

Odd, however, that such a flatmate would come to see him now, after so much time. 

Human curiosity is indeed impossible to measure, or contain, or predict. And Sherlock knows that he’s abnormal, a novelty, by nearly every estimation. 

And yet.

He runs a particular vocal pattern against his cache, just a snip of sound where there’d been so few words: _What are you—_

He meets with emptiness, not even a hint at some history, some potential removed: no barred access, just a wasteland, yawning.

The breathlessness that follows is something without precedent or explanation, but Sherlock experiences it as hatefully familiar.

He withdraws. He breathes. He refocuses.

He breathes. Ties himself to the facts.

It comes down to this: there are things that he knows, that are beyond his capacity to delete, or attempt to delete, or to even so much as mask within the confines of the Palace, in the safety of his mind. When Sherlock settles himself on the floor of the Throne Room, the place where he safeguards the truths that are most inviolable, he affirms it.

To have chosen this course, he’d been willing to sacrifice.

To have walked this path, he’d been prepared for the worst of all outcomes.

To have consented to this willingly, by any interpretation of the term, he would have needed a single motivator, vicious and sheer.

The heart that’s housed here, under lock and key: the heart shivers hatefully within his mind and in his chest, vibrating with secrets he’s never wished to know, and Sherlock’s nearly wrenched from his own thoughts as he senses, knows his own physical touch against his chest at the ruckus, at the intrusion of chaos where he seeks order, where he imposes control.

 _Love_ , it hisses, strains against the constraints Sherlock had built long before this, before he chooses to recall—the heart he has but doesn’t, because it’s beyond his reach, where the most dangerous of his fault and failings live and breathe and remain, unmoved. 

_Love_.

Most vicious of all.

And Sherlock allows himself the moments that stretch beyond eternity in this space, that swell and fill and exceed his ability to withstand: Sherlock allows himself weeping without tears and raging without noise and trembling without motion. Sherlock allows himself confusion and denial in the space of all things until he regroups, reassembles his own facade of control and accepts that when the evidence aligns, improbability emerges as peripheral, once there are no other possibilities left to pursue. 

He breathes, and the heart threatens to bare itself, wanton and shameless and bold, before Sherlock begins to deconstruct the unbelievable, to render miracles rational and strip their ambiguity, eradicate all wonder. 

_Agape_ is beyond him, this he knows. He is a creature of vast potential and specific limitations, but his capacity for empathy, for selflessness, has never been in question: it is stunted, and he does not despair of it.

Discard.

 _Eros_ is beneath him, and yet he knows himself as a pile of shambles, these days; he is jumbled, disoriented and laden with all that is just beyond his reach, so perhaps he stooped to that low. There are flashes of grey in his mind that catch the wind like pearls and set the rain-drenched sky to shame, and the pounding that echoes through the chamber reeks of havoc and hope, so perhaps.

He swallows hard— _perhaps_.

Then _storge_ —familial. There is a brother, of course, but what he recalls is unconventional, and what he knows in the present is far from textbook, and yet he himself breaks every mould imaginable, so it is not beyond possibility. There is the fleeting impression of a woman’s hand, defined by warmth and strength and the depth of her wrinkles, and yes.

Maybe that.

Or else _philia_ , perhaps, an affection, a camaraderie, and while he cannot see it, cannot cogitate it fully or apply it with any solidity, he can envision its edges, the barest hints of its circumference as it envelops and holds. Friendship is something he’s never comprehended, precisely, never seen as a skin that would suit, and yet there is a whisper from somewhere, toneless and unclear: _friends protect people_.

He can’t place where it stems from, but it persists, and that is enough.

For now.

Sherlock’s not certain how many minutes, or hours, days or even more deign to pass before he emerges, before he’s shaken physically and the gates are closed, the bridges raised, the fortress of him made impenetrable once again and his eyes snap open, swimming with the after-image of light and a gaze like the skies had been in Kandahar, when he’d been in Kandahar, except no, except yes; hair the colour of grains of sand, and glass ground fine, the play of the sun across the particles as if they mean everything, as if they demand to be cherished because that’s the way the universe learned how to spin; his eyes snap open, and narrow, but with pupils too wide.

It stings. 

And then there is a presence, a person, and the touch on Sherlock’s shoulder is neither known, nor entirely repulsive, and he is granted half-a-moment to wonder, _maybe_ —

“You have a visitor.”

Mycroft’s footsteps leave as quickly as they came.

Sherlock’s heart pounds hard, for no reason at all.

_____________________________________

“I offended you.”

It would have taken all of John’s willpower to resist the response that bubbles up his throat from somewhere deep, from somewhere sore: _No shit, you bastard. You arrogant, thoughtless, heartless fucking bastard_, and really, John’s willpower's seen better days.

The first bit gets out before he can stop it. The second, thankfully, gets reigned in time.

No matter, really, because Sherlock doesn’t acknowledge what’s spoken, let alone what’s left unsaid.

Typical.

“It was my error,” Sherlock continues, his eyes trained on the ceiling as he stretches, draped across a chaise that looks at least worth six months of John’s pay, hands folded atop his chest, palms down, and it’s a small difference, a slight variation—inconsequential, save that it’s just not right.

“You were interesting, as soon as you walked in,” and that’s not quite right, either, not like the Sherlock he lost, but not like the Sherlock he’d found that first moment, those early days: blunt, and yet open as Sherlock had only rarely been, as if by accident. “I overestimated your intellect as a result. Your mind’s more common. I expected you to be less of an idiot than was reasonable. Error, as I said.”

John’s not ready for it when he looks up, when he keys back into the words themselves and notices the pause, glances and gets caught, snags on the sharp lance of Sherlock’s eyes on him, piercing through.

“I don’t normally make errors.”

John wants to laugh, wants the bitterness that swells in him to froth and seethe and come out, because oh, the _errors_ : not even the experiments, the times he’d taken John for granted and risked John’s life, or hell, risked his _own_ life, no—no, Sherlock was full of fucking errors, but the worst, the worst was leaving, the worst was running off, the worst was John allowing him, the worst was not fighting, the worst was Sherlock failing to claw at John and scream and him and make his blind bastard of an only friend _see_ what was happening before it was staring him down from a rooftop. The worst error was “alone protects me.” The worst error was “leave a note.” 

The worst error was breaking John’s goddamned heart open on the pavement before John even knew who it had grown to beat for.

John wants to laugh, but he can’t. 

He just can’t.

“You are, though.”

John sneers, and the strangled sound that escapes him doesn’t have a name. “What, an idiot?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes as he sits up, reclining, spine arched above the wall as he sighs. “Don’t pretend to be insulted,” Sherlock scoffs. “Most people are idiots, practically everyone.”

John hums, because yes, well, _obviously_ —and drums his fingers for lack of any other outlet, any other way to release the building, impossible _something_ that’s growing, rising from the toes of him upward, begging to get out.

“Interesting,” Sherlock finally saves him, stills him mid-tap.

“What?”

Sherlock shakes his head, breathes out slowly and tilts his head backward against the wall, eyes closed, hands folded in his lap. 

“You’re interesting,” he states clearly. “Why are you interesting?”

John snorts. “Just my lot in life, I suppose.”

“I make errors when it comes to you,” Sherlock continues, and John senses something in his tone, a shift, a gravity that shouldn’t be there, but maybe shouldn’t be anywhere else. “But I think more quickly, more clearly,” and John’s taken back to Dartmoor, just for the moment, and for the first time since the end, since the last, he returns to that place in his mind without wondering through the what-ifs, without imagining impossibilities overlain against the truths, moments of proximity laden with closeness, promising more.

“You are,” Sherlock continues, but he seems unsure, trails off.

“A conductor, perhaps?” John ventures, almost wistful.

“A prism,” Sherlock finally decides, and John must look confused, or maybe not, because Sherlock’s not looking, Sherlock’s fascinated by the stucco on the wall. “You tease out the invisible strands.”

John thinks very hard about what he might say to that, to that of all things, but he comes up short. He comes up short, and Sherlock’s eyes stick through him, sharp, as he attempts to regroup, catches him off-balance as he tries to swallow around the wincing of the heart in his throat.

“Why can’t I seem to tease out yours?”

_____________________________________

It only takes a few weeks to unearth the reason—partial, total, irrelevant—for his unease in this place, this house that is not his and that ill-fits him, the air that tastes wrong from every corner, at every turn.

He needs—he knows—to return to London.

And if Mycroft mentions that John—strange, prismatic, common-calling John—lives in London; that he took up, in Sherlock’s absence, the space that Sherlock remembers, lightly, gently: small impressions of the steps and which floorboards creak, the landlady, her tea, which biscuits she always buys and what cleaning products she uses, though she’s not a housekeeper—more a person-keeper, Sherlock thinks, more a carer, more a mother, perhaps: if Mycroft mentions that John will be in London, implies that he may be at Baker Street when Sherlock arrives, well. 

That’s inconsequential, really.

Sherlock resents the anonymous black car that ferries him back to his city, but he cannot remain petulant, not when she comes into sight: he demands to be dropped near Farringdon (because something is near there, something significant missing from his brother’s insinuations and half-truths, something that ties this together, he _knows_ )—insists that he be allowed to test the knowledge ingrained in his bones about this place, the arteries and veins of her, the way she moves and breathes.

Breathes.

And it’s the first time that Sherlock feels like himself—the first time he recognises what he is, how he is, what’s missing and how its absence shifts the whole of him. He inhales, deep and stinging at the core, and he filters through a thousand scents, countless hints of life and death in the air: excrement and grease and exhaust, nicotine and pastry icing and the sweet hint of marijuana, and it’s all gorgeous and hateful and brilliant and bold, but the things that strike him, that _matter_ : of those, there are just three.

Petrichor. His footprints in the standing water.

Salt. Saline, brine, cured meats: no matter. The sting of it, in eyes and in wounds and the way it lights on the tongue.

Espresso. Heady. Oppressive. All-encompassing. Undiluted.

Three. Three. Three.

Why three? Yes, three. Just three.

Petrichor, salt, espresso.

Three. Three. Three.

Petrichor, salt, espresso.

_Philia, storge, eros._

He smiles to himself, and orients toward home, because he this he has not forgotten. This is still more real than water and fear.

Vicious motivators. A place with meaning, though the sort is vague.

Breadcrumbs.

He starts to run, and he knows the steps before he makes them, and that’s comforting, really: that’s more of a relief than he’ll admit, after so many locked files and barred doors—after so much wondering, too many second guesses: this he claims. This he knows.

He’s simply following his own clues.

_____________________________________

“You live here.”

John jumps to his feet with a speed that’s near embarrassing. Not just because it’s a bit pathetic, really, to have been so lost in his thoughts that he missed Sherlock’s entrance; that he’s still so intent upon the man that he’d react in such a way—no, it’s also almost-humiliating-if-not-quite because he just about trips over his own feet and over the table in front of the sofa in the process.

Brilliant. 

“I do,” he finally manages, once he’s got his balance.

“You still live here.” Sherlock says it as if it’s a different question. John’s not sure it really is.

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” John claps his hands and rolls back on his heel: “I _still_ live here.”

“You weren’t bought out, I mean. My brother assured me I’d be returned to my former lodgings, but he didn’t indicate if you’d be remaining in them, as well.” 

Sherlock glances, looks him up and down in that way of his that still speaks of _foreign, stranger, other_ , that way that sticks like molasses in John’s throat. “Hmm.”

That’s all John gets. _Hmm_.

Hmm, and a backhanded demand as to why he hadn’t moved out of Sherlock’s space when this place, _this place_ is all that’s driven John to the brink of insanity, kept him from crashing and throwing himself from ledges and windows, or loading his gun.

Hmm.

Fucking hell.

“Did my brother hire you to spy on me?” Sherlock’s staring at him, different from the first time, when that question would have been answered differently, too, and John wishes, not for the first time, that he had Sherlock’s mind, that he’d held more dearly to every instance, every expression and exchange Sherlock had ever burdened or graced him with. John wishes he could parse exactly what’s changed, so he could have a fucking chance to figuring out the _why_.

“What? No,” John shakes his head, too fervently. “No.”

“Oh,” Sherlock almost sounds disappointed. “You might think about offering your services, then.” Sherlock’s not taken off his coat, or his gloves; he runs a finger across the countertop, and John doesn’t even bother squinting to see if he picks up any grime in the process. 

“He’ll agree to an obscene sum,” Sherlock continues, offhand. “Might help with the redecoration.”

John blinks. “Redecoration?”

That’s unexpected.

“Hmm, yes,” Sherlock muses. “We’ll need more kitchen.”

John blinks again. Also unexpected.

“More _what_ , exactly?”

It’s difficult to say whether Sherlock hears him or not; whether, if he hears, he processes at all. 

“Strychnine can’t go next to the sugar,” Sherlock recites as if it’s a nursery rhyme, a primary school lesson as he opens the containers near the kettle, sniffing at each with mild curiosity. “Too early to suss out the difference, can’t take any chances.”

And those words, those particular words in that particular cadence: they’re not merely out of character, distinct, jarring—they settle softly at the back of John’s mind, déjà vu and cigarette smoke at dawn, and the air’s suddenly very, very thin.

“Cross-contamination,” Sherlock’s still muttering to himself, and John’s about ninety-nine percent certain that’s a term Sherlock did not know, before, had long deleted as unnecessary. “We’ll need another freezer, at least,” and John’s entranced for a second, for no good reason, as Sherlock nearly waltzes along the far wall, stretching his arms wide to estimate, to measure as he mumbles on: “Two, ideally, and a full refrigeration unit.”

He’s in the cabinets, weighing tins between both hands before John can think twice, before he can grasp for the breath that’s running from him, evading the grip of his lungs. 

“Kidney beans and actual kidneys have next to nothing in common, including shelf space.” And there it is again, that sing-songy recitation, almost by rote. “Which is wrong, obviously, the shape and the colour begot the name,” he adds, frowns as he seems to think about the words that preceded, seems to realise the way they don’t fit.

“ _Space_ , John,” he finally settles on, his tone impatient, so fucking familiar that John swears his insides twist with it, pull and play at tearing. “We’ll need more space.”

And it’s no surprise, the way it hurts, the way it sears and the way he stands dumbfounded, staring after Sherlock as he swans out the room, because John’s put it together, now. Because the words, the words that don’t fit, they’re not meant to; those words aren’t for now, really, they’re not from now. 

Those words aren’t Sherlock’s, because Sherlock would never think those things, let alone give them voice. And there are only so many scenarios that would explain the reason Sherlock knows them now to speak them, to give them shape outside his own knowledge, his own thoughts and choice. There’s only one person who’d say them, who’d be in the position to say them, who’d have the patience to _say those words_ rather than throw something, rather than shout and storm out. Those words aren’t _Sherlock’s_.

Because before everything broke: back before John knew what it was like to ache in a way incompatible with the task of breathing, with the effort of a heart in its pumping and release—back before the world opened and did John the disservice of refusing to swallow him when he needed it most to grant him just that one favour, that singular mercy; _before_ , he’d nearly poisoned himself while he made his fucking tea, and lost his appetite far too many times because of all the organs in the body, kidneys had always put him off most.

Because back then, once upon a time, those words were _John’s_.

And John—chest tight and mind reeling—had been under the distinct impression that deletion didn’t quite work that way.

_____________________________________

“How’s the flatmate arrangement working for you, then?” Mycroft says over the lip of his coffee, the same variety of which he’d forced upon Sherlock in kind. “The good Doctor is managing well, I trust?”

It takes all of three minutes for him to grasp, quite wholly, that his brother was not, is not, and never will be, a _friend_.

It takes seventeen seconds more, precisely, for Sherlock to start seriously considering the urge to dump his own cup of the less-than-mediocre brew right atop Mycroft’s head, just at the hairline, so it singes the strands as well as the bare flesh.

“John.” The name’s out of Sherlock’s mouth before he can stop it, or think about it, or think about stopping it. It coalesces of its own accord and makes its way from his lips with a fierce kind of protectiveness, an indignant kind of defiance, because Sherlock may have known and overlooked him, once—and that’s something that’s beginning to seem very clear, because for all that John must have returned to London, and lived long enough with the woman whose loss ruined him so soundly to fall in love with her, Sherlock is coming to realise that John has to have shared space with him for a fair amount of time, before, given the way he moves around Sherlock, makes Sherlock’s tea (and it tastes right, if awkward, on his tongue), but Sherlock had deleted him, early on it seems, erased so much of what must have been an arrangement of at least _some_ length, and yet the man had stayed.

For reasons still uncertain.

So maybe Sherlock had overlooked him, underestimated him; Sherlock may have discarded him, but as he said when they met (again)—he was prone to errors, errors surrounding John, and if Sherlock Holmes can be counted on for a singular certainty, it is that he does not make a mistake only to repeat it. 

Sherlock may have only _known_ John, now, for a brief time, but he knows that John is more than a “good doctor.” John is more than a _good_ doctor. John is more than a doctor.

John more than _manages_ just about everything in his path.

“John is fine.” Sherlock says, again, without much conscious input, and Mycroft’s looking at him rather strangely, all judgement and bewilderment and amusement and superiority, and yes, Sherlock thinks the coffee first, then he’ll rap that godforsaken umbrella atop the reddened flesh of that thick skull, and he’ll feel better, he’s certain, except—

Fine.

It’s such an imprecise word. Sherlock doesn’t approve of imprecision. John is esoteric and quaint, inscrutable and common. John is an infinitude of adjectives and half-concepts, only a fraction of which have been tested or proved yet all of which, he knows somehow, are true. 

But Sherlock, before he can think it through too closely; Sherlock says fine.

_All fine._

He blinks, and the echo of something, _something_ , fades before he can lend it too much credence, but not before he files away the vague impression it leaves.

All fine.

Odd.

But there is no _philia_ here, and Sherlock’s honestly a bit relieved to discover as much. To say that Mycroft borders on insufferable is a horrible understatement.  

And yet: the clues. Three, three, three. They’d been quite clear.

Puzzling. 

Sherlock swallows his coffee as quickly as he dares and stands, leaves without another word, because frankly, he has better things to do.

The _skull_ has better things to do. 

_____________________________________

John doesn’t realise he’s humming until the buzz in his throat, behind his lips dies abruptly.

“Sherlock?” John doesn’t look toward his flatmate, is instead fairly well fixated on the anomaly in the fridge where it stands out, stark and bright before him.

“Hmm?” Sherlock responds from behind the refrigerator door, and John hears the kettle bubbling, beyond, but it’s all a bit amorphous, really. It’s all a bit unreal.

John swallows once, twice, before he manages the question, impossible though it seems.

“Did you get the milk?”

John swings the door closed and holds up the carton, shakes it a bit for emphasis as Sherlock’s gaze narrows towards the object in question: he looks confused, for a moment, before he breathes out slow and meets John’s eyes.

“Oh,” he says, sounding surprised. “Yes. I suppose I did.”

John opens his mouth to say, well, to say god knows what, but he gives up the effort, stares again at the milk carton as if it might offer some insight.

“Do you even _like_ whole milk?”

Sherlock takes a moment. Thinks. John watches the subtle ticks flutter across Sherlock’s face with incredible speed: inquiry, revelation, displeasure, uncertainty, control, control, control—blank. 

“No,” Sherlock finally answers. “I,” his mouth quirks downward and his head tilts ever so slightly. “No. I don’t.”

John brews his tea, adds sugar that _he_ doesn’t take, doesn’t even like, simply because the novelty of being able to use the sugar bowl without concern for the sanctity of its contents has yet to wear off—and splashes the milk in, whole milk, because John prefers it. Rarely buys it for himself, knows it’s a bit indulgent, but treats himself to it, now and again, and maybe it was coincidence, maybe it wasn’t, but Sherlock _never got the milk_ , not ever, and it’s possible, isn’t it, it’s—

The tea, however, doesn’t do much to help the twinge in John’s midsection at this latest of the strangeness, the aberrations, the pieces of Sherlock that aren’t what John mourned, or missed.

That aren’t what John loved, and yet—and it’s this that hurts worst, that cuts deepest—they could be.

They could be what John learns to love all over again, even when that piercing gaze refuses to recognise him, to remember; even when that mind’s just learning him from the top down once more. John knows, knows somewhere deeper than he’ll say, that he will take what he can get, and lie to himself to ease the sting as long as he needs to, as hard as he can stand.

And that’s bloody fucking terrifying.

The tea, he finds, has gone cold before he can finish it.

John feels sick to his stomach as he pours what’s left in the mug down the drain.

_____________________________________

The case is taxing, trying: they always are when children are involved—but they solve it. 

“Calls for a drink, yeah?” Lestrade claps his hands together as they make to part ways.

“I’m knackered,” John shakes his head. “Rain check?”

Lestrade’s already nodding, turning to leave—to drink alone, Sherlock observes, and this is the perfect chance, really. Tailored, custom-made for his needs.

An opportunity, Sherlock thinks, to test his hypothesis for certain. 

Because _eros_.

Because Gregory Lestrade, for all that Sherlock feels no pull of that sort, displays numerous points of attraction, when considered in light of the stereotypical criteria of stimulation for sexual arousal.

“A drink,” Sherlock is saying, nodding, following Lestrade and distancing himself from John, and if both men look at him as if he’s proposed a career change to stand-up comedy, well, it’s an excellent reason to cover the sinking feeling he gets in his stomach with a roll of his eyes.

A sinking feeling that seems, oddly enough, to be proportional to the space between himself and his simple, predictable, damnably-indecipherable-for-all-the-secrets-he-doesn’t-seem-to-have flatmate. 

In the end, Sherlock leads, and picks the pub by default. It’s not as if he frequents such establishments.

But there are motions to go through, and go through them he does: he performs the task with all the prescribed components. Sit, shrug off coat, order something of relative quality, express interest in one’s companion.

And it’s there, where things begin to hitch.

Lestrade is bone-tired, that much he can read; he sips his lager slowly, too slowly—Sherlock’s not sure which whiskey he purchased, precisely, because it’s irrelevant; he doesn’t even remember the cost of it, had merely continued to place bills on the counter by the till until the underpaid university student who’s been skimming nightly profits started handing him back change. No: he’s trying to focus on Lestrade, on the silver of his hair and how it should scream “distinguished,” or the pull of his muscles beneath the rolled cuffs of his sleeves and how they should prove titillating. The work of his throat as it contracts around a swallow. The colour of his eyes, objectively enticing.

Nothing like the sky.

Sherlock doesn’t know how long he spends staring, trying to conjure impulses and emotions, attachments that might salvage the last of his already-shattering theory; Sherlock doesn’t know how long he spends observing without seeing before he stands, shrugs into his coat and leaves without a word.

The walk to 221 is long, but every time he thinks of giving in, hailing a taxi or taking the stairs into any of the Tube stations he passes, it feels wrong, distasteful, sour in his throat.

So he walks.

And he makes an effort, an actual effort, to be subtle, to be quiet as he enters, as he passes Mrs. Hudson’s front door.

Proof, then, when she emerges, covering her nightgown with a shawl, that _effort_ is highly overrated.

“Sherlock?” she mutters, confused but waking, sharpening as she blinks away sleep. “Is everything alright?”

He turns to her, offers a tight smile he hopes passes for apologetic. “Just fine, Mrs. Hudson.”

“John came back alone,” she adds, hedges, implies a host of things that Sherlock notes but cannot parse, and he cringes inwardly, perhaps even outwardly, because it’s not merely beyond him, it’s not simply useless trivia: there are things he _knows_ and he feels traces of them, trails that may have led to their hiding places in his mind, bits of data leaking forth, but the tracks are muddled, the scent lost, gone cold, and it’s maddening, _maddening_ —

“I worried.” And if Sherlock feels an inexplicable surge of affection for this small woman, folding her arms into her body to stave off a chill as she sways half back through her door, half toward him, almost hopeful; if he feels compelled to wrap an arm around her and press his cheek to the top of her head, then he makes the very conscious choice not to dwell upon it.

“Get some sleep,” he murmurs to her, and she leans up and give him a quick peck on the curve of his chin.

“Goodnight, dear.” And when her door closes, he affirms that for two failures, one thread of his original supposition rings true.

 _Storge_ , oh, yes.

But is that enough?

_____________________________________

It’s only when John enters the kitchen, his gait shuffling, still languid with slumber, that Sherlock registers that the night’s escaped him; it’s long past dawn.

“Morning,” John yawns as he flicks on the kettle, and Sherlock wants, inexplicably, to return the greeting; means to be silent. 

“I knew you,” is what comes, instead; the words feel slippery as they pass his lips, beyond his control to recoup. “Obviously.”

“Yes,” John draws it out long, tired. Sherlock would call the sound of it ‘heartsore’ if he possessed the sufficient qualia. “Obviously.”

“I’d say that we were friends, but,” Sherlock shakes his head as something indescribable, unquantifiable, seizes his throat because it’s wrong, it’s all wrong, and _insufficient_ keeps rising to the front of his thoughts, unbidden.

“You don’t have those, do you?” The words are bitter, and John smiles, but it’s not a smile; it’s sickly, it’s a smile in its death throes. 

Sherlock knows this conversation. Differently, but he knows it, and he can’t remember why, knows only the feel of weathered stone and cool air on his skin.

“I never did,” he agrees. “And yet.”  He pauses, tries to dig for the source of the sense memory, searches _brick_ and _limestone_ and every other possibility that arises in a microsecond frame within the hard drive. 

“Yes?” John prompts, and the search is empty. Failed.

But Sherlock feels like there’s more than that.

“Nothing,” he tries to dismiss it, but John is immoveable, and that thrills Sherlock, that makes Sherlock feel filled with something real.

John stands and stares and waits expectantly, impatiently patient, and Sherlock feels as if he might like to rise and make himself close to John. Make himself inseparable.

How odd.

“I can barely stand my brother,” he confesses, before he can replace the walls, erect his barriers anew because he did not notice, he could not see that they’d fallen in the first place.

He can feel his heart start to climb inside his throat, and he flinches, wishes beyond all logic that the pulse would bring with it comprehension, would unleash illumination and make all these shadowed places seem navigable, seem known. 

“Good to know some things never change,” John tilts his head and steeps his tea.

“They’re not enough.”

It startles John, for one reason or another; the hot water sloshes and he winces, and Sherlock feels that rising heart of his pump hard, fear until John curses and rolls his eyes, moves with care where the heat hit his skin and yet, moves with a certain grace. Fine.

He’s fine.

“What are you on about, now?” John bites out, towelling the spilled water, and Sherlock runs it over in his mind once, twice: John hadn’t bumped the mug until after Sherlock had finished speaking. The sound of Sherlock’s voice hadn’t startled him. 

The words, though; those had caused him to jump. 

“I remember,” Sherlock ventures, curious. “I remember having to leave.” 

He swallows, the taste sour at the back of his throat. “Having to,” he pauses, and the breath that interrupts is shrill: “protect.”

John says nothing, not with words, but the line of his spine speaks volumes that Sherlock thinks he should be able to translate without thinking; they’re garbled.

“Lestrade is useful,” Sherlock admits. “The cases, they are,” he waves a hand, because words are strange fiends and they often don’t manage their tasks. “And I trust him, in a way.”

John’s lungs expand, full.

“I would not die for him,” Sherlock breathes out around the sigh that escapes John, soundless.

“Mrs. Hudson is,” Sherlock ponders a moment; “a mother I never looked for, and I care for her.”

Sherlock hears the striking of ceramic against itself before John slides his tea from the plate of toast it rests against; Sherlock’s eyes narrow, watch the way that John’s hands continue trembling, just outside casual notice, soundless now, and something restless rises through his chest.

“I would not leave my world for her,” Sherlock gives it voice, the obvious, because sometimes minds are weak, require assistance.

Sometimes, the body knows.

“Friends protect people.” Sherlock doesn’t know where the words come from, where they spawn from, only that they are right and they are horrible and they shiver through his ribs and grasp tight, seek to strangle the life from him even as they show him what light looks like against the sun.

He can’t breathe, but the air’s never been sweeter.

“It doesn’t add up,” Sherlock forces out, the words only half-managed, and he only looks up in time to see John abandoning his tea, his toast; to watch his retreat over the rising steam from his drink, to blink against the heavy closing of a door.

And then; then there’s only humming. From the shower, over the running of water.

Humming. From the muscle lodged unbearable against Sherlock’s vocal cords, his trachea, pounding, pounding until it trills.

So very telling.

Revealing nothing.

_____________________________________

Sherlock’s bent over the body when Greg approaches John, nearly brushes shoulders for how close he gets.

“How are you doing?” he asks, and John’s not taken aback; the question is a long time in coming.

He doesn’t have the time, or the energy, or the will, really, as he watches Sherlock work—watches him crouch and leap and pace and circle the corpse on the ground with all the manic energy that John dreams about, sometimes; wonders how it’d feel to be wrapped in it, consumed by it; John doesn’t have the wherewithal, just then, to manage a convincing lie.

“I honestly don’t know.”

Greg nods at the man in question, oblivious to their existence in the moment, let alone the conversation at hand. “You know, when he came for drinks the the other night,” and that had been fucking strange, honestly, and Sherlock had come back not long after John, and John had most certainly not been listening, not been wondering, not been just a little bit warm with curiosity, or anything more sinister, anything more possessive or, or—

No. Nothing of that sort.

“He ordered a double Balvenie,” Greg tells him, and John wants to snort, because for all that he knows Sherlock’s not strapped for funds, he’s fairly certain the posh git didn’t even know what a single malt like that was worth, likely hadn’t noticed. 

“Paid cash, and didn’t take a fucking sip. Stared at me for a good,” Lestrade screws up his face as he estimates; “fifteen minutes. And then he left. Damn good whiskey, mind,” Lestrade tacks on. “I figured, no sense in letting it go to waste. But even for Sherlock, it was off. I mean, weird enough that he came at all, but I thought, he’s just in the mood to tell me how unqualified I am to do my job, and, well,” Lestade sighs, “I’d actually missed that.”

And John’s trying to take all the information in, like Sherlock might, his best approximation. John tries to make sense of any of it. 

He’s not Sherlock Holmes, though. He comes up short.

“What I mean is,” Lestrade finally ties it together, finally comes to the point: “It’s strange enough from this end. I can’t even think what it’s like for you.”

“He makes tea.”

Greg starts when John says it, when John says it without taking his eyes off of Sherlock doing was he does best. “What?”

“Tea,” John repeats it. “He rarely did, before. Usually if he’d done something horrible, some kind of strange apology, the only way he knew how. He brewed it the exact amount you’re meant to, but it was never quite strong enough for my tastes,” John smiles despite himself. “I always left mine to get the near side of bitter.”

Sherlock stands, and John can’t deny the way he watches the stretch of Sherlock’s muscles, the lean lines of him beneath his clothing as they unfurl; can’t deny the way it leaves him far too warm.

“He brews it like that, now,” John tells Greg, finishes because they don’t have much time. “Like I brew it. Right amount of milk, no sugar, lemon when it needs it.” John stares at Sherlock, who’s still staring, just a few more seconds, at the crime scene, blinking at scheduled intervals, processing data. “He brews the both of us tea, just like I’d brew it. Just enough bitterness.”

Sherlock looks up, and meets John’s eyes, and John doesn’t, can’t trust what he thinks he reads in that gaze in the moment before it shifts, because everything is different, now, and Sherlock forgot him, removed him, but not the way he takes his tea. 

“I don’t know what that means.”

John heaves out a long breath, slow and sharp as it claws from his lungs, and shrugs at Greg before he makes toward Sherlock.

_____________________________________

Humming. Again. 

John.

He’s humming again.

Sherlock’s beginning to suspect that it’s a common occurrence, or else, that it was. He thinks, at first, that may have been grounds for the deletion, but it’s a futile pondering—John, this John, this man: he is imperfect, he is not brilliant, and yet he has a brightness, an enigmatic streak. 

He does not warrant deletion, and atop everything else, his absence in Sherlock’s mind is a mystery unto itself.

It takes nearly a week of careful analysis of John’s strange proclivity toward mundane musicality: he hums, he whistles, he vocalises nonsense, pops his lips in vulgar rhythms that make Sherlock vaguely uncomfortable—yet Sherlock is approximately 96.7 percent certain that the habit is not indicative of mood, positive or negative, but instead a learned response, an enforced grounding, a rejection of silence where silence is no necessity—a surgeon would need a centring technique; a soldier would want such lines drawn thick. 

Regardless: it takes nearly a week of careful attention and collation for Sherlock to realise that it’s not the humming (and all the derivatives thereof) themselves that catch his attention—fifty-seven of the instances were, in fact, no more than white noise and would have, under different circumstances, been entirely discardable.

No, it’s not the humming in and of itself.

Instead, it’s a particular melody. One that seems as if it should be familiar, but isn’t—not in the general sense, as many whims of popular preference settled beneath his notice, but it _feels_ like a gap; he’s beginning to recognise those, now—but he can’t be sure. Coincidence, perhaps.

He cannot disprove the possibility without further evidence. 

Not to mention that it’s faceless, generic as they come. The progression’s trite—I-vi-IV-V, starting in from C4—and marks hundreds of songs from a time gone by. It could be anything.

“Hey.” 

John’s voice rouses him; Sherlock hadn’t noticed his eyes had closed around the thoughts, the confusion, the doubt; hadn’t noticed the humming itself had ceased.

John’s close, he realises, before he looks: Sherlock can feel John’s presence, the shift of the room around his physical form, the heat of him, and Sherlock wonders, as he has wondered now since the first day he saw John after, _after_ , how it could be possible to remove this man, strange and impossible and inevitable and uncanny, from a consciousness.

John Watson should be inextricable.

What Sherlock sees, when he does open his eyes, is John watching him with unguarded, unveiled concern. What Sherlock sees is something simple, something easily defined and yet poorly understood, and his chest feels tight, and he cannot quantify the pull.

“You alright?”

Sherlock’s less bothered by the fact that he cannot think of an answer to that question, than he is by the fact that the air in his lungs grows suddenly heavy, viscous, when he focuses on John’s gaze, the shade of those eyes.

He has to clear his throat four times through before he can speak.

“I know that there are pieces I’ve misplaced,” Sherlock states simply; “or wilfully removed.”

John’s eyes widen just a fraction, just a hair, and it might have been a trick of the light, it might have been, except Sherlock knows better.

Sherlock knows.

He forces tense muscles to relax as he stretches lengthwise along the cushions and folds his hands beneath his chin, breathing deeply, ignoring—quite pointedly—the uncharacteristically determined pump of his heart beneath his forearms, insistent.

“I leave clues,” Sherlock speaks with both eyes closed; “when what I may have lost is worth recouping.”

There should be enough clues, by now. He should have his answers.

And _yet_.

_____________________________________

The palace feels sinister, almost foreign. The control panels in the throne room present in runes he can’t read, that feel like blood in his veins: known but unseen. He wills silence, he wants desperately to scream.

“Who is John Watson?”

Nothing new, nothing revelatory. The search is still running, because there is so much, too much: in just the weeks since rediscovering the man, Sherlock has amassed terabytes upon terabytes of significant data on him, has filled rooms and built new wings to house the minutiae, the irrelevant necessities that are John, John, John. 

“What is John Watson?” he tries, because perhaps John is more than a who, than a singular entity; Sherlock doesn’t place much stock in sentiment, and less stock still in his own ability to parse it with any meaning, but he feels like more.

John _feels_ like _more_.

There’s a shift, though; nothing quantifiable, or tangible, but he can sense it, perceive its weight. The searches don’t reveal anything, don’t break open the dams but they’re lagging, they run too slow: something’s running in the background, he can feel the metal of padlocks, of chains and barbed wire and his subconscious seeking to protect.

_Friends protect people._

His chokes on something solid, fluid, flailing in his throat, and casts what nets are left to him unfathomably wide.

“What is John Watson,” Sherlock swallows, grinds out glass on cold steel: “What is John Watson to _me_?”

Whatever sentience, whatever sliver of his own being guards the treasures, the demons, the revelations that he more than suspects, more than supposes reside beneath: whatever it is within him that has barricaded the heart of him on a pedestal in this place and filed away every thought and inkling toward emotion: whatever piece of him led the call to collate and organise and _order_ feeling and imprison that which defied categorisation—whatever it is, Sherlock thinks that it smiles, then.

Thinks that maybe, it approves.

Perhaps it’s tired of the dark; the solitude.

He’s not sure how he came to know it, but he does: _alone does not protect._

_____________________________________

John can’t remember the last time they had a case quite this gruelling.

Well, no, scratch that: John won’t _allow_ himself to remember the last time, because the _last_ time’s rather caught up in angry words and lies and tears from too high up and too far away and blood and salt and greygreygrey, and a man who may not have been willing to live for him but at least considered him memorable, worth thinking on from time to time, so no.

John would really rather not go there.

Sherlock hasn’t slept in over 84 hours. The toll of it’s starting to become evident, but only in small ways: John has to fight less and less to get him to drink some water, doesn’t have to encourage him long at all, really, to snag a pepper from his curry. 

Little tells.

At present, though, Sherlock’s glaring at his phone, which had demanded a software update before it would open a single app, as he shuffles through the files and pulls at his curls in rapid sequence. He’s flipping through photos of the crime scene and muttering about the victim’s stepbrother when a groan escapes him, which turns into a whine, which turns into a roar loud enough to startle John to his feet, just in time to grab at Sherlock’s forearm before he can chuck his mobile at the wall in a fit of pique.

“Sherlock,” John tries to break the rage, the tumult that’s seething inside that genius skull. “ _Sherlock_ , here, just use mine.”

He holds out the phone Harry gave him a lifetime ago, the one he held on to—Sherlock thought it was backward, or else, defiance, before, and John was more than happy to let him believe that, knew the truth of the sentiment would be even more insulting to Sherlock’s sensibilities; after, of course, he kept the phone because there was no other choice.

Why he still has it now, he’s not sure.

Either way, Sherlock stares at the proffered device with something akin to horror, his eyes wide for the last half of a second and the first blink of the one that follows before he grunts and turns away, but John thinks there was something in that look, that gaze that means something.

Fuck all if he knows what. Hopefully it’s to do with this godawful case.

“There isn’t sufficient data,” Sherlock whines, raves. “There aren’t enough clues.” He contemplates his own mobile again, and John steps forward to protect it from destruction just as Sherlock grabs for the case file and flings it across the room, buries his hands in his hair and snarls: “No one could _manage_ this!”

There’s always been something beautiful in the terror that is Sherlock coming undone—for boredom, for frustration, for all the wrong answers to the questions; but this, now, is so much more tragic than it is gorgeous, and John fancies that he can see, can recognise a turmoil that brews beneath the surface of the murder they’re trying to solve, that’s seeping through the cracks that the strain of the case has torn: he just wants to help, really. He just wants Sherlock to stop pacing and making that wounded sound in his throat as he makes to scalp himself by sheer force of will.

“Sherlock,” he tries to get the man’s attention, but he knows it’s doomed to fail; he closes the distance between them and stops Sherlock with hands on his shoulders—meets startled eyes and fights the urge to frame that face with needy palms.

“Look at me,” John instructs; “Calm down. Breathe,” and Sherlock does, and John bites his tongue against the feeling of Sherlock’s chest brushing his own on the inhale.

“ _You_ could,” John responds to his ill-expressed fears, tells him with complete conviction, because he believes, he has always believed in Sherlock Holmes. “You _can_ , you can do this. Just, go through the evidence again, think it through, you’re fucking brilliant.”

And Sherlock’s eyes are heart-wrenchingly naked, except John can’t see what lives beyond the layers, even so, because what he _wants_ shines too damned bright. 

“No one,” Sherlock’s voice is low, barely there, and it sounds strained, sounds far away, and John has to watch him to see the shape of what follows, because the sound is so weak: “No one could...” 

John watches as Sherlock stills, freezes entirely: the way those eyes lose outward focus, turn inward to reflect upon the processes of an intellect that still, to this day, leaves John a little breathless. He watches Sherlock’s chest heave sharply, watches Sherlock’s eyes dart toward him with singular focus and oh, oh, that feels too familiar, that feels too _right_ , and the world isn’t allowed to tempt him, to lead him on like this, the world can’t be that cruel.

It cannot be that cruel and still keep spinning.

Sherlock’s on his feet, phone in hand as he shrugs on his coat, and John doesn’t get a good look at him, can’t tell if he was projecting, imagining; of course, he was, but he still wants to be sure. 

“Have you got something, then?” John makes himself ask, moves to maybe grab his own jacket, but maybe not, he doesn’t know, he feels so outside of this, and that’s one of the hardest parts: not knowing where he stands, where _they_ stand.

Sherlock pauses, just inside the door, and John knows, suddenly, heartbreakingly, that he’s not welcome wherever Sherlock’s off to.

 _On my own_.

He feels ill. 

“I—” Sherlock starts, and John hangs on that single syllable as it lingers long after Sherlock shakes his head and turns. 

“Sherlock, wait,” John manages, but that’s all he manages before the door closes, and he’s alone.

He falls back into the chair—Sherlock’s chair—and it feels dark, again, like it hasn’t in weeks.

_____________________________________

He makes it to a bench in the park, thankfully, before his legs give out and the world grows far, distant.

 _No one could be that clever_. That is what surfaced, that is what sticks in his mind, because as soon as John had said it, the cage started to rattle, the lines began to blur, and the offer of a phone meant more, _more_.

 _You could_.

His eyes open and he’s in the Palace, placed before the terminal, poised to access all the files and download all the data, if only he can break the locks and set it, all of it: set _himself_ free.

The screens, the walls are blank; the searches run on, infinite; and it seems that the whole of his Mind sneers at him, the heart locked firm inside the files flutters at him wild, wicked, pounding shrill in askance.

“Partner,” Sherlock forces out, breathless.

Nothing.

“Friend,” he snarls frantically, his vision hazy as he gasps, pants, chokes: “Best,” he stammers, and he’s hot and cold all at once, all across his skin. “Best friend.”

Stillness. Silence.

“Conductor,” he tries, feels cool air on the back of his neck, adrenaline, _fear_ : “Conductor of light.”

No result.

“Lover,” he whispers, and it’s not below him, not now, not like this: no, it’s so much more, so far beyond him, beyond what he’s earned but oh, he already thinks that he wants it, with or without what secrets live beyond.

And yet, he is denied.

Sherlock’s heart is racing, wrenching, pleading and he is breathless, weightless.

“Heart,” Sherlock tears from the centre of him, burning: “the heart.”

“ _Everything_ ,” he wrestles out, because he thinks, he knows, he _feels_ as if it’s true and perhaps if he admits it, if he chances failure and leaps unseen, the world will open, and the vast secrets of being will unveil themselves anew.

He’s close, he _knows_ that he is _close_ , but there’s nothing.

Nothing but a buzzing, a nagging, a fleeting sensation that speaks of promise and ensures that he doesn’t retreat, because just the hint of what that promise might mean, _could mean_ makes him dizzy, makes him faint.

He pants with the weight of it, the force of it, and _thinks_.

Everything. Every thing. Heart and soul and blood and bone and—

Heart. Muscular organ. Hollow. Adult contemporary radio. Seat of emotions according to the Galenic corpus. Chinese constellation. Triangle of Koch. Comprised of striated tissue that pumps, pumps, pumps. Amicis novel. Also referred to as Jam Tarts. Sacred significance in Christian symbology. Triple-layered. Rock ensemble, famous for the single “Barracuda.” Chordae tendineae. Human error assessment and reduction technique. Stage of plant embryogenesis. Volcanic mountain massif in British Columbia. Four chambers. Melbournian football club. Conjectured as synonymous in Sanskrit, Hebrew, with— 

Soul. Incorporeal essence of the self. Theorem of Riemannian geometry. The Haverhill Hack, MacDougall. Australian telecom company, pre-merger. Supposedly immortal. Kia subcompact. Logically indefensible. Collectively, an American post-grunge outfit. Divided by fifths. Second tallest structure on the Gold Coast. _Ren, Ba, Ka, Sheut, Ib._ Canadian environmental non-profit. 

Heart. Soul. Heart, soul. Heartsoul. Heartandsoul. Heart, and Soul. Heart and—

Carmichael and Loessner. Late 1930s. 50s progression. Tea and jumpers. Steady hands. Wet hair and a threadbare dressing gown. Afghanistan-sky eyes. The single syllable of a four-letter word. Breath and pulse and blood and bone and—

 _Heart and Soul_.

Sherlock is reeling, shivering, and if the heart in his chest is pounding then the one here, kept safe here at the centre, the core, buried piece by piece in separate drives so as to never be glimpsed, never be taken as a whole: if the heart in him is shaking, then the one before him here swells wide, overwhelming. He sits, his eyes slide closed and the command-line terminal lights, green-on-black, and if he could swallow, if he could breathe, he might hesitate, he might, except he can’t, he can’t.

His fingers are on the keys, and the song plays out in John’s voice, the vibrations in his throat; the song that John hums and breathes and moves his lips around that has grasped and clinged to Sherlock with such desperation—the song that John shapes, the song that is John and it _shines_ ; note by note, letters spilling row by row.

C three times, a fourth.

B, A, back to B, C, D, three Es, and another.

Down to D, C, D, again E, F—G.

Back to C. 

Higher A, but no distinction: G, F, E, D.

And once more, just once, the world is ending: C.

The shudder that rocks his body, his mind, the very fibres of his existence: the drives stretching far short circuit, the foundations of the chamber crack and start to give.

Oh. _Oh_.

And Sherlock laughs out a sob as every lock cracks, as truths spill like infinite precious metals, small gems pouring forth, every observation, every calculation, the blinks in a minute and the exact pressure a trigger finger would exert, the acceleration of his pulse when he stared at those eyes in just the right light, and the days upon days he’d spent married to the task of replicating, giving a name to their shade; the warmth of John’s skin against his own as they ran, the touch of its phantom as Sherlock had reached from the heights, the hotel he’d trashed and spent the night hunched in the corner of, broken china lodged in his palm as he’d trembled for the loss, the ache, the _need_ ; the whisper of John’s voice in his ears like damnation as he’d stood on a different rooftop, the needle in his hands as he’d gasped for air that wouldn’t come until the syringe plummeted, not into his vein but down to his feet and he crumbled, in upon himself for all he’d never said, would never say; the days where he ate nothing and drank nothing and slept for nothing and lost consciousness because what was consciousness, really: he was weak, he’d been compromised, he did not deserve—

The moment he accepted that he could not protect his heart for feeling it, and distilled sentiment from John’s lips—unintended, hummed idly all those days and nights; not his, not for him, and _yet_ ; the moment he knew he had to lock it away, to delete it as best he could so that he could breathe again without the glass in his lungs slicing deep, because without John's ghost, without infinite memories that still would never be enough, he’d never think, never recall just how to unleash that torturous wanting, he’d never accidentally stumble again upon that agonising _feeling_ , he’d never unwittingly unleash that paralytic, rushing through his system like a poison, like a prayer, no—he’d be safe. He could endure. He could succeed.

He could protect.  

Oh, _god_ —Heart _and_ Soul.

Sherlock shakes with relief and with guilt, with grief and with pain and with _joy_ because oh, _yes_.

Yes, that.

 _Precisely_ that.

He texts Lestrade as he walks, as he runs: _Arrest the lover._

The most vicious of motivators. The most obvious of clues. The most overwhelming, all-consuming of all the things Sherlock’s ever scorned, ever feared.

He’s breathless as he climbs the stairs.  
_____________________________________

“I’m sorry.”

John’s not. Sorry, that is. 

John’s not sorry, because when Sherlock comes back through the door, not an hour later, looking worn and fragile and blown a little wide but _whole_ , John doesn’t think he could ever be sorry.

“We—” John begins before he can think it through; “Sherlock, you can’t,” and then he breathes, because Sherlock can breathe. He waits, because waiting isn’t necessary, anymore; because Sherlock is here. He stops, because as much as he cannot, absolutely _cannot_ handle Sherlock faffing off to god knows where, god knows which ledges of rooftops without him, Sherlock doesn’t remember what it means, how it was.

Sherlock doesn’t know.

“No, it’s,” John exhales slowly, collecting himself. “No, fine. Just,” he sighs, because there’s nothing for it, and his eyes hurt, his chest aches. 

“I’m off to bed, Sherlock,” John says, and he knows it sounds tired, stretched thin. “There’s tea,” he nods to the kitchen; he braces his hands on the arms of the chair and makes to rise. 

But then, there’s Sherlock. There’s Sherlock, and he’s indefensibly close.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock repeats, and John’s in no mood, John can’t go there, not now.

“I’m not mourning anymore, Sherlock,” he shrugs it off, struggles to keep his tone even, but his success is limited. “You don’t have to—”

“John.”

Sherlock’s hand settles on John’s shoulder, and his eyes are brighter than John remembers seeing them, ever.

“I am _sorry_.”

“Sherlock,” John says it, and the name sounds confused, he knows; the name sounds desperate, sounds like the world ending and something broken but beautiful rising in its stead, and when Sherlock slides down, crouches, kneels so John is level with him, stares him straight in the eye with a hand that doesn’t falter on the curve of his skull, John’s heart twists with all the _could have beens_.

Pounds unending for all the _might still bes_.

“I have done you wrong upon wrong, John, in only seeking to do right.” Sherlock’s voice is warm, now, in a way John hadn’t noticed was missing—maybe because it had been so rare, before. 

“I am prone to errors where you are concerned,” Sherlock carries on, and John wonders if he knows that he’s stealing all the air in the room for himself, the selfish prick. “Blind spots, miscalculations,” Sherlock shakes his head softly, wry and regretful. “Self-pity, perhaps. Indulgences I should never have allowed.” 

John thinks the world, thinks God himself must hold his breath in the moment where Sherlock huffs out a sigh and lays his head in John’s lap, as if it’s nothing. 

As if it’s an action worth more than the sky

“Always,” Sherlock says softly. “There’s always _something_ , John.”

Something. This. Sherlock, the warmth of his cheek, of his breath against John’s thigh; the way he reaches for John’s hands where they’ve gone limp, now, and lifts them, straightens and leans to look John in the eye as he folds John’s fingers, his palms, his wrists inside his hold and keeps, just keeps.

 _This_ is something.

“I did not dare to think you could,” Sherlock’s words falter, but those eyes, those eyes are steady and they’ve got more depth in them than John thinks he can stand, and they see him, they _see_ John like he’s killed and saved, like he’s lived and died and fought and only stopped running when Sherlock stopped breathing but he’s breathing, they’re breathing, but he won’t run, can’t run now, no matter how much this, what he thinks this could _be_ , scares him to the bones, to very marrow.

Thrills him. Threatens to make him whole.

“I did not dare to believe that you could care for me with the kind of depth that would prevent you from moving on, from moving past and finding the kind of happiness you’re meant for,” Sherlock lifts the hands he holds and folds them, palm to palm inside his own, and John can feel his pulse inside each fingertip as Sherlock breathes: “The kind you deserve.”

Oh, don’t get John started on the things he _deserves_ when it comes to this man, this infuriating bastard that takes up so much, too much of John’s heart.

John can’t speak, can’t move, can barely stand to breathe as Sherlock inhales deep, exhales long over, and over, his hold on John’s hands tightening and releasing over and again; as Sherlock steadies himself, eyes closed, while John can’t stop the torrent, the trembling that rages through his veins—cannot, for the life of him, even think to look away.

“I am not the sort to sacrifice everything for another,” Sherlock admits, voice low; “to give all that I have and all that I am unselfishly, so as to spare someone else.” 

His eyes flicker upward and catch, and John’s whole body seizes to see the vulnerability, the way those eyes shine too brightly, the red around them unfounded, threatening, and oh, John wants to reach except he isn’t sure, he can’t risk.

He’s had too many second chances, already. He can’t leap now without knowing where he’ll land.

“I am not that person, John,” Sherlock whispers, doesn’t look away: “I have not been and I will not be.”

“But I would give everything I am and everything beyond me to protect _you_ ,” he shivers, they both do, with the weight of that statement, the truth in it vibratory and so very, very solid. “Because you are the only real thing in a world of pretence. In a universe of static speckled with clues, with the chase and the work and a game which never has lasted, has never truly been enough.”

John only notices Sherlock’s hands shaking around his own when the words trail off, when Sherlock breathes in deep and holds it, trembles for a long stretch of moments before he brings his hands, and John’s, to his mouth: doesn’t press his lips in, doesn’t kiss John’s palm but holds there, breathes there, and speaks into the skin like an incantation, a confession:

“You were starlight in the dark from the first, John Watson.” 

And what does a man say to that, exactly? What does a man say when wishes are granted and miracles received, when the heart in him is sprinting fit to burst and moving, so much as _thinking_ too hard might break it?

“When it was, when I,” Sherlock takes his silence, the lack of anything fitting to say in reply, as leave to continue, and John’s grateful, John’s grateful for the voice of him, the trust, the way his words are warm, still so close to John’s body, and _Jesus_ , John’s lungs are too goddamned small.

“The highs were flickers of fire in the vein,” Sherlock murmurs, marvels. “You were brilliance in the sky, everywhere, magnetic and violent and mesmerising, and I wanted to swallow you and wrap myself in you, around you, keep you safe and bask in you and I did not understand it at all, John, not one bit,” he sucks in air harsh, shrill, and it reminds John that he has to breathe, which is good, very good, because when Sherlock meets his eyes just then, he loses the capacity once more.

“But that didn’t make it any less real, any less _true_.”

John would be convinced, entirely, that this was a dream, or a hallucination, if not for the sharp pull between his ribs, the thick swaths of feeling in his throat: the heat between them, and the way his heartbeat’s everywhere, terrible and true—too real for anything but living, but being, but truth.

_Please, god, let it be true._

“I could not,” Sherlock falters, and John’s never noticed it before, if it was ever there to notice, but when his voice wavers, Sherlock’s eyes open in a way that’s almost unbearable, all innocence and fear and blind-burning hope before they settle, before he stares and speaks. 

“I _cannot_ abide a world bereft of you,” Sherlock speaks it as if it’s a secret, a rule of the universe revealed, unbreakable, impossible and unbent. “There was no question, there was no choice.” 

John’s heart fumbles a bit, for how it feels to hear that aloud, what it feels like to hear Sherlock— _his_ Sherlock, returned to him, unfractured and full—say those words.

“Selfish, John,” he hisses, then, desperate, and in so damned deep. “I will always be selfish in that way, with regard to you.”

John thinks he knows the feeling.

“I do not know,” Sherlock shakes his head, disbelief and comprehension warring in his posture, his presence as he brings their hands—still folded, so warm—to rest against his forehead, straight to the centre. 

“I would have deleted you,” he breathes out, strangled, serrated on the edge and John feels it when the words strike the heart of him. 

“I would have removed you because you stick in my blood and make me heavy with feeling, and the ache that comes when I think of you as anything less than breathing, and being, and whole, John,” and Sherlock’s voice breaks, it quite literally breaks just there and John thinks that’s where his heart takes its cue, because he feels it cracking beneath the weight of that, the strangled hint of a sob in the man before him who’s more heart himself than anyone ever gave him credit for, just as much sentiment as logic, just as much feeling as anything else and oh, John loves him.

John loves him.

“And the work was necessary,” Sherlock picks back up, tries to compose himself even as the words come out too high, too strained. “It could not be compromised, because to compromise it would be to compromise you and that was unthinkable, that was unbearable.”

Sherlock’s babble cuts off with a squeeze, a near-unmanageable pressure around John’s hands as Sherlock presses fingers to John’s wrists and waits; counts, John realises. Absorbs proof that John is there, and somehow, that’s the best proof John has that this isn’t mere fantasy, or whirring desperation. 

“I would have deleted you,” Sherlock exhales, “if it meant ensuring you, if it meant—”

And when Sherlock trails off, it’s silent, an impossible silence full of questions and answers and longing and all the maybes, all the possibilities in the cosmos ricocheting in the space between: John can hear the wild thrum of his heart, can feel it in Sherlock’s fingertips against his veins, and John had thought, for a very long time, that he’d forgotten how to hope, how to believe in the impossible.

He thought he’d grown too old, too world-weary to _give_ , and yet then there was Sherlock Holmes, bringing him back from the dead all over again in returning from the grave himself, and John is laid bare, John is flayed and defenceless and _oh_ , he’s never felt more alive.

“I can’t remember if I ever told you,” Sherlock finally speaks again, lips brushing against John’s hands incidentally, but John wants it to be on purpose so damned _badly_ that it threatens to drown him. “Or if perhaps I deleted that too, before anything else, because you’d been disgusted, or uncomfortable, because I’d ruined—”

Sherlock cuts himself off, and his breathing is loud, raucous before he calms enough to finish.

“I cannot know for certain if I ever said it, but John,” Sherlock whispers, almost moans, and it feels like pleading, like begging, with Sherlock staring up at him, with his hands held, with Sherlock’s lips now on his wrists with intention, with _meaning_ as Sherlock implores him—silently, but the intention’s so clear—to _see_ : “I got it wrong, the second time we met.”

John holds his breath.

“You did not fall,” and when Sherlock’s tongue lilts against John’s skin, innocent between syllables, John’s heart forgets what rhythm is, threatens to give out then and there. “You were not seduced. It was not physical.”

“But John,” and Sherlock turns their hands then, holds John’s palm-upward and watches John intently from beneath his lashes, so much fucking soul in that gaze that John thinks it could destroy him, burn him alive if it wasn’t so unfathomably intent on _keeping_ him.

“John, I,” Sherlock swallows, and while he doesn’t look away, his voice pulls at the seams: “I did fall in love with you.”

John’s heart forgets more than rhythm, at that; forgets everything outside those words, the _feeling_ those words are laced with: those words and that feeling he never dared to hope for, but dreamt of nonetheless, for so very long, against so very many odds.

“Without knowing what it meant to love,” Sherlock bows his head and lines his lips against the creases in John’s palm, “I came to know with absolute certainty that love could only ever be what you did to my body, what you did to my mind,” he leans forward, brings the flats of John’s palms perpendicular to his half-heaving ribs so that just the tip of his nose grazes John’s hand. “How you gathered in my chest and made breathing a fascinating trial for no reason, save for the fact that you are _you_ , John, and you are necessary.”

“I deleted you as best I could because it hurt, and I am selfish, and so long as you lived I could stand to lose you,” Sherlock breathes out in a rush. “If it meant your survival, I would have done anything,” and John’s mesmerised by the stream of air in and out of those lungs, captivated in a way that makes no sense, and that’s how he knows, he _knows_. 

“And yet how could I ever delete the heart of me?” Sherlock asks him, wavering, laden with so much trembling feeling that it blindsides John, for a moment, shakes in his pulse and rattles around his lungs. 

“You remained scattered through every cell,” Sherlock tells him, stares at him with absolute focus, as if John is a wonder that cannot be contained. “In the way I brewed tea too long and ate appalling flavours of jam when I wasn’t hungry, in the way my fingers shook when I needed a fifth nicotine patch but couldn’t affix it to the skin. The scent of your soap soothed me at my worst, though I could never remember why it should,” Sherlock bends, leans, and presses his lips against the base of each of John’s fingers, breathes him in deep, and John is fascinated, John is lost beyond wishing to be found.

“I could make myself forget the concept of you, when left with no alternative,” he whispers into John’s knuckles, draws John’s hands in and gathers them loose, gentle to his chest.

“But never the soul, John,” he promises, vows with the weight of the world inside the pledge: “I could never make myself forget the soul.”

And John can’t stop himself, can’t reign himself, because he can’t _doubt_ any longer, after that.

He pulls Sherlock to him, slides from his seat to the floor and buries his head in the crook of Sherlock’s neck, relishing the way Sherlock’s chest knocks into his, the way Sherlock’s face, Sherlock's breath warms the shoulder he rests his own head against.

“You were always there, whether I could see it or not,” Sherlock breathes. “You were always there, John, I,” and John feels the fluttering of Sherlock’s lashes, feels the fluttering of the heart in his chest before he notices the shaking, notices the both of them shaking and he pulls back, hands still fixed to Sherlock’s arms, holding him with an urgency, a need he can’t place in words: he pulls back, and he can’t fight his grin as he whispers, shakes his head in wonder as he marvels at the man, this _man_ :

“You utter moron.”

And John doesn’t hesitate, when he takes Sherlock’s waiting lips, sucks into that perfect fucking mouth and tastes.

“You, you,” and Sherlock’s lips are impossible, soft and flush and gorgeous against John’s teeth as he nips. “God,” and when he leans, shifts to slide his tongue, to map uncharted planes on the roof of that mouth, he catches Sherlock’s eyes, catches the want there, the fever. 

“You brilliant idiot,” he gasps between presses, between moans he can’t control, can’t name as his own or as Sherlock’s with any certainty. “You deduced me both times we met,” and when Sherlock bites his lower lip, he feels the jolt of it down his spine, hot in his blood, tight in his thighs. 

“But there’s always something,” John breathes into that open mouth, relishes the shiver it sends through Sherlock’s body as he slides his cheek against Sherlock's, feels the tease of stubble on them both as he murmurs against Sherlock’s jaw, tongues below the ear: “Isn’t that what you said?”

“John, I don’t,” Sherlock pants, gasps when John comes back around and sucks hard against the corner of Sherlock’s mouth before he slips his tongue back in. “I didn’t dare to—”

“Who did I move in with?” John demands, runs his hands up Sherlock’s chest and brings the questions, the deductions from that first day, the second time, to the fore. Forces logic to reign for this moment, at least. “Who did I lose? Who did I lo—”

John’s voice cracks; his hand lingers at the centre of Sherlock’s chest until it settles, until the truth sinks in.

“John—”

“Shut up,” John leans in to the hollow of Sherlock’s throat. “Shut up, and be here, with me. Convince me that you’re real and that you know me when you see me.”

John almost wishes he hadn’t spoken, when Sherlock pauses, stills, and pulls back; the sentiment, though, is short-lived—dies when John sees Sherlock’s eyes, brimming with something that defies definition—it's too big, too _much_.

“John,” Sherlock shakes in the saying, and John doesn’t think he’ll ever know the sound of his own name to be sweeter than that. “You are the only thing I feel I’ve always known, despite the impossibility. You are the only sure thing left.”

John surges forth, at that, slips his hands beneath Sherlock’s shirt and devours his mouth as his palms roam; Sherlock runs hands down John’s sides, reading the juts and divots before he fingers around the waist of John’s trousers, meets John’s eyes with askance first, heady desire close on its heels.

John realises, in that moment, that for all that he’s felt, and for all that Sherlock _sees_ , it’s possible, it’s entirely possible that this, here, is the one blind spot that could destroy a heart so hidden, a mind so great.

 _Moron_. 

“I think,” John murmurs, as he moves his hands deliberately from Sherlock’s neck, across his shoulders, splays them beneath the clavicles, still. “I think maybe that I’ve loved you since the beginning, that I knew it without knowing, because you are your own kind of gravity, and I,” he steadies himself, kisses the notch between Sherlock’s collarbones with infinite care as his touch wanders, traces Sherlock ribs.

“I was so lost, and so alone,” John breathes, mouths a trail that follows behind the path of his hands. “And I owe you the breath in my lungs because you saved me, and when you fell, when you stole that breath back,” John eases Sherlock’s shirt to hang off his arms and presses the circumferences of his lips against Sherlock’s nipple, breathes there without sucking and revels in the stark hitch of Sherlock’s heart beneath his tongue as his hands move to settle on Sherlock’s hips. “It felt, well, fair dues, you know? I wasn’t, I couldn’t,” and John’s overcome, just then, despite the living proof beneath his hands, his mouth, with the memory of cold and loss, and when his head falls against Sherlock’s sternum, he’s shaking, he’s freezing. “I wasn’t—”

“You were,” Sherlock catches his chin and tilts him up to look at him, to read it in his eyes. “You are. You are the only one who could ever be enough.”

And yeah, John’s beginning to see that, now. Beginning, against all hope and probability, to believe that it’s true.

“I watched you on that rooftop and I knew before you fell that I couldn’t stop you,” John confesses softly. “It was like bleeding out again, like watching the sky after the blow and I begged, Sherlock, I _begged_ —”

“Shh,” Sherlock breathes, sets his lips against John’s temple and breathes there, slow and grounding as he holds John to him tight, and John lets himself take in Sherlock’s body, his presence, his living being so goddamned close because it’s real, and John’s just enough of a fool to believe that this is forever. 

“Budge up,” John murmurs as he slides his hands beneath Sherlock’s thighs, lifts as Sherlock gets the hint, levers himself onto the chair now at his back. His eyes widen as John fumbles with his fly, kneels for height and coaxes Sherlock’s pants to the side to take him in hand, to tease the fingers of both hands against each side, to breathe a shaky stream of air against the tip, against the vein as the length of him strains, and when John takes the head between his lips, the sound that Sherlock makes, the taste of ecstasy like vivid sorrow and what comes after, joy incomprehensible: it’s enough to tear through John and makes him senseless as he sucks, drags blunt teeth, twirls his tongue as he pulls off, eases forward, hands bracing at the insides of Sherlock’s thighs, affirming that this is solid, this is real, this is happening, this is his heart and it is _warm_ when it soars. 

Sherlock shakes, and his hands in John’s hair are bliss as he comes, spills and John takes it, because it’s real.

Even he can’t imagine that taste. 

He’s sucking at the juncture, the pulse near the groin when Sherlock moves, dislodges John’s mouth and slips back to the floor, settles on his knees in front of John and wastes no time taking John’s lips between his own, licking himself from John’s teeth as he loosens John’s trousers, works a hand past the elastic of his pants and strokes John for every kiss he gives, breathless and needy and John sinks into the sensation of it all, and he's peaking before he can rightly comprehend it, he’s growing boneless against Sherlock’s skin before he thinks to want that more than air.

“I love you,” is what tumbles from his mouth as Sherlock collapses into him, just as desperate. “I am blindly, stupidly, indefensibly in love with you, and when you were gone I,” John swallows the thickness in his throat and Sherlock kisses the left crease of his lips, and it’s better, it’s gorgeous, and John’s throat is thick again for other reasons entirely. 

“I changed,” he finally manages. “It changed me, I adapted in order to survive, and then you came back, and I started,” John huffs a shaky breath, and Sherlock’s hands on his back, on his body, are a blessing. 

“I’ve started to find who I was again, because you,” he breathes into the rough at Sherlock’s jaw. “You are so much of me, Sherlock, and you reminded me, you remind me of what I lost, or forgot, or put aside.” 

“But I need you to know that if you leave like that again, I don’t know what you might find if you come back,” John whispers, because it’s hard: hard to say it, hard to know it, hard to avoid Sherlock’s eyes as he speaks the words because of all the hurt that’s healing, yes, but remains.

“I don’t know what will be left,” John finally says, shakes his head into Sherlock’s cheek slowly, subtle, back and forth and back. “I don’t know if there will be any, remembering, if there will be anyone worth reminding of anything—”

“I won’t leave,” Sherlock saves him, ducks so that his nose brushes John’s and coaxes him to look up, look in. “I couldn’t,” Sherlock swallows hard as he watches John, takes all of him in and steels himself, it seems, to give in kind.

“I have killed, John, I have—” 

He shudders, and John feels something in him ache, something in him reach to soothe, and so he holds to Sherlock all the tighter as he meets John’s eyes, his own wide enough to drown in.

“But in losing you, in hiding you away, I killed my own self.” Sherlock tucks John tight against him, presses his lips to the top of John’s head and they breathe, they breathe.

“I don’t think I’m strong enough to do it twice,” Sherlock whispers, and John can feel the words in his throat as they mingle, merge with the rush of his blood and it’s more than water in the desert.

It’s all the stars in the Afghan sky.

_____________________________________

He enters the Throne Room, settles at the Command Terminal and places his hands upon the keys.

Waits, as every file, every locked door holding so much as a hair, a cell, a scrap of John Hamish Watson loads, is revealed.

It takes time; there is so very much of John, here, that Sherlock’s not sure how the structures would stand without him, were he truly gone. 

The breath leaves him unexpectedly as the whole of his consciousness takes in the data, the observations, the sights and scents and tastes of John, this John, _his_ John, and the heart before him and the heart within deigns, dares to sing with it, he thinks, and it’s saccharine, it’s sentimental, it is foolish and dangerous and inexcusable, and it is right.

He reminds himself, before the fear takes him, that it is _right_.

Nothing is more right than this.

So Sherlock walks every corridor and throws open every door, every place he sought to hide or hoard or keep something untouched, untainted. He picks every lock and deletes every passcode, and when finally, _finally_ , the whole of John Watson is swimming, uncategorised and vibrant, complex and confusing and too big, too full, too good—all that he knows and infers and wishes to learn more than breathing, more than air, all of it stretches out beyond vision, beyond sense or knowing and it is terrifying, and Sherlock wants to shrink from it, wants in the moment he sees it all and begins to feel its true weight to lock it away, again, to make it small: not to forget it, no, never that again, but to contain it. Make it easier to breathe around, to swallow against and hold.

Distractions. The whole of it.

And yet.

Sherlock looks at the man he’s built into the very walls and beams of his mind, who’s seeped into his muscles and settles warm inside his bones: Sherlock looks at the puzzle that is infinite and his chest feels so very small that it’s maddening, indescribable. 

_Brilliant_.

Sherlock looks at John, and he unwraps the chains and unlocks the heart and before he can regret it, before he can think twice he feels the lightness, the heat suffuse through his ribs, trill around his lungs, and it’s exquisite, it could be lethal.

It’s worth it.

Sherlock exits the Palace, the Hard Drive, leaves it in gorgeous disarray, because John is here, but John is waiting, and there is so much more to _know_.

He exits.

Keeps every window open.


End file.
